After MidnightIrmgard Keun
The Fallback PlanLeigh Stein
Here’s the first couple paragraphs from a recent article about a basement. Not just any basement, a New York Times basement, otherwise known as “the morgue,” where more than 150 years’ worth of photographs and newspaper clippings are stored. To get here, one must leave the shiny…
The spirit of Félix Fénéon lives on. Remember Luc Sante‘s brilliant 2007 translation of his faits divers? Novels in Three Lines collected the French anarchist and art critic’s beautifully and hilariously condensed reporting of true crimes and happenings in Le Monde newspaper in 1906. A selection: With…
Last week Longreads announced it had partnered with Virgin Atlantic Airlines and was introducing a new business called Travelreads, which offers flyers long-form articles about various locales curated to match their flight destinations. The idea goes that travelers who are flying to London, for example, might…
Aficionados of the MobyLives comment section beware, your literary pseudonyms may not protect you. The Times-Picayune reports that a US prosecutor has been unmasked as a prolific and often angry commentator on NOLA.com, the online offshoot of The Times-Picayune. Using the handle “Henry L. Mencken1951″, the prosecutor Sal Perricone lambasted…
A notorious copyright trolling firm has been resoundingly smacked down in court, much to the delight of bloggers. Righthaven was established in 2010 with the sinister aim of suing bloggers and other online writers — even users of forums — for using content from their…
Last week, the annual VIDA count revealed the continuing gender bias in US journalism and literary criticism. This topic’s attracted significant attention this past year, thanks in large part to bestselling author Jennifer Weiner‘s public commentary, but the results reveal that the situation remains as bleak…
How wonderful to be reminded of John Leonard’s rules for criticism in the debut issue of “The Slate Book Review.” There Troy Patterson reviews Leonard’s posthumous collection of essays, Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008, and smartly quotes from the 2004 essay “Smash-Mouth Criticism,” wherein Leonard…
The above screen shots come via Romenesko, who tracked down debut C-Span appearances by journalist heavyweights Jill Abramson, Mike Allen, Malcolm Gladwell, Andrew Sullivan, Dan Preist and others. Larger pics here, here, and here.
Jon Mitchell reports on Read Write Web that a new iPad app has not only advanced the way stories are published, but also created a noun. To better explain: ”Storify for iPad. That’s a complete sentence. Storify is a noun, yes. It’s a company that…
Jack Shafer has high praise for a new book about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate reporting and their most famous source, W. Mark Felt. The book is Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat by Max Holland, to be published March 6 by University Press of…